N1: Now it’s 1936. Genie’s mom and grandmother sit in their New York City apartment.

N2: All around them are glass tanks filled with Genie’s pets.

N3: Suddenly, Genie’s grandmother screams.

N1: A large black snake slithers under her chair.  

Yumico (yelling): Genie, your snake is loose again!  

N2: Genie, now 14, rushes in.

Genie: Rufus! There you are. 

Grandma: You have too many pets, Genie. 

Genie: But I’m studying them. I want to be a scientist.

Grandma: Oh, Genie. Only men can be scientists. 

Genie: Why?  

Yumico (sighing): It’s just the way the world works. 

Grandma: Maybe you can be a scientist’s secretary?

Genie: I already know more about fish than most adults. Nobody’s going to stop me!

N3: Genie graduates from college in 1942. She wants to do research at Columbia University. But it doesn’t let her in because she’s a woman. 

N1: The professors there think she’ll leave school to get married and have children.

N2: Finally, she is accepted by New York University. As part of her studies, she travels to California in 1946. 

N3: There she works with a fish expert named Dr. Carl Hubbs. He takes her out on a boat with some male students for her first dive ever.

Dr. Hubbs: You’ll all need to wear this helmet. The hose carries air from above. 

Genie: Is the hose long enough for us to walk around underwater?  

Dr. Hubbs: Yes. And you can communicate with me by pulling on it.

Student 1: How?

Dr. Hubbs: One tug means you’re OK. Two means you need more hose to walk. Three means you need less. 

Student 1: Got it!

Dr. Hubbs: And four tugs means you’re in danger.  

Student 2: What then?

Dr. Hubbs: I’ll pull you up to the boat as fast as I can. 

N1: The male students take turns diving. 

N2: Finally, it’s Genie’s turn. She jumps into the water. 

N3: Soon she’s walking on the sandy ocean floor. She sees a flounder, sea plants, starfish.

N1: Then suddenly, she gasps. 

Genie (inside the helmet): I’m dizzy! I’m dizzy!

N2: She tries to tug four times on the hose. But after one tug, she falls forward. 

Genie (inside the helmet): Help!

N3: Nobody can hear her. 

N1: Just as she is about to pass out, Genie’s helmet comes loose. Cold water rushes against her face, waking her. 

N2: With her last bit of energy, Genie makes her way  to the surface. The men pull her into the boat.

Dr. Hubbs: Are you OK?

Genie: I couldn’t breathe! Something’s wrong with the hose.

Student 1: You must have turned the air valve the wrong way.

Student 2 (quietly): Only a girl would make that mistake.

Dr. Hubbs: No, look—the hose has a leak. That’s why you were losing air, Genie.

Genie: I knew it!

Dr. Hubbs: What an awful thing to happen on your first dive. There’s only one way to get over it.

Genie: How?

Dr. Hubbs: Go back down.

N3: Once Dr. Hubbs fixes the hose, Genie does exactly that.

N1: Genie keeps on diving.  

N2: And in the 1950s, she opens her own lab in Florida.

N3: It has a dock in the ocean, with a giant holding pen for sharks.  

N1: Genie is now married with children. But that doesn’t slow her down.

N2: A scientist named Lester Aronson helps her set up a special experiment.

Genie: I want to prove that sharks are smart—that they’re not just mindless killing machines.

Lester: Yes! But how?

Genie: We can train a shark like a dog.

Lester (laughing): Sharks can’t sit or stay!

Genie: No, but perhaps we can teach them to touch a target to get food?

N3: Lester makes and hangs a target in the shark pen. 

N1: They start practicing with a 2-foot-long nurse shark.  

Genie: We’ll reward her every time she touches the target. 

N2: They try to get the shark to touch the target. But she won’t.

Lester: It’s not working!

N3: Finally, the shark accidentally touches it.

Genie: I knew it. Good girl! 

N1: Genie drops a fish into the shark’s mouth.

Lester: Do you think she’ll do it again?

Genie: Let’s see.

N2: This time, the shark swims straight to the target.

Genie: She’s learning!

N3: The experiment becomes the first to prove that sharks are intelligent animals.

N1: In coming years, Genie travels the world.

N2: She dives deeper. 

N3: The more time she spends with sharks, the more she respects them.

Genie: They’re more afraid of us than we are of them! 

N1: But around the same time, something happens that spreads fear.

N2: The movie Jaws comes out in 1975. It tells the story of a beach town terrorized by a man-eating shark. 

N3: The TV ads are everywhere . . .

TV AD: It lives to kill.

All: Dun dun . . .

TV AD: A mindless eating machine.

All: Dun dun . . .

TV AD: It will attack and devour anything.

All: Dun dun . . .

TV AD: It is as if God created the devil and gave it . . .

All: Dun dun . . .

TV AD:  Jaws!

N1: The film becomes one of the biggest movies of all time. 

N2: And sharks become the enemy. They’re hunted for sport and killed by fishermen.

N3: The number of sharks in the ocean declines. Genie is heartbroken.

Genie: These poor animals! They’re so misunderstood.

N1: Over the next decade, Genie makes it her mission to defend sharks.

N2: She gives public talks. She writes articles. 

N3: And she gives interviews that draw on her research.

Reporter: Can you say how many hours you’ve spent diving with sharks?

Genie (laughing): No. I guess I ought to keep track. It’s been thousands of dives! 

Reporter: And you’ve never been scared?

Genie: It is safer to swim with these animals than it is to drive on the highway. 

Reporter: That can’t be true.

Genie: They usually only hurt us if they feel they’re in danger.

Reporter: Is there anything else people should know? 

Genie: The ocean is not our home. Is it fair to kill these amazing creatures so we can feel safer swimming in it?

N1: Eugenie Clark became known as “the Shark Lady.”

N2: She died in 2015 at age 92. But only after her childhood dreams came true.

N3: She swam with sharks.

N1: She showed that there was room for women in science.   

N2: And she proved that these amazing creatures were smart and worth saving. 

Genie: Sharks have their place in this world, just like everyone else.